Insight and analysis from thought leaders in agile development and testing, DevOps, security, test automation, and more.
I was recently reminiscing with a friend regarding some of the hairier projects we had worked on together. One in particular stood out. It was for a financial services company. While the project itself had no specific security requirements, the company decided toward the end of the project that it needed to have security […]
I was recently having a discussion with some coworkers about test-driven development. There was some discussion about the relative value and cost, and not surprisingly some dramatically different opinions on the subject. It got me thinking about my own habits. I like test-driven development, but I’m not a purist. I almost always write my code with testing […]
When I first start a new Java project, one of the first things I set up is a skeleton Ant build.xml file. I try to set it up so that a new developer on the project should be able to checkout and compile with no configuration. At least that’s the goal. That means setting up some […]
Five years ago, it was not difficult to find companies willing to experiment with Agile on their low-priority, low-visibility initiatives. In my experience, most customers were happy with the transparency and predictability they gained, but where left wondering whether the planning and estimation practices could hold up under the fire of fixed-time, fixed-cost, and fixed-scope initiatives. In […]
Agile adoption isn’t an all or nothing proposition, as I have heard it described. At one point in my Agile adoption I wouldn’t have even believed it. If I went go into a new client that said they were an Agile shop and they didn’t practice all of the XP practices, I would feel they […]
I have worked on teams that were successful just creating an continuous integration server that ran unit tests. Unit testing is the corner stone of testing in software development. If you units function correctly there is a higher probability that the application as a whole functions correctly. If you can write unit tests that cover […]
Over the past seven years, Coveros team members have served on scores of agile development projects ranging from five-person, custom-development efforts, to large system integration efforts with hundreds of team members working world-wide. One byproduct of all this experience is the recognition of a surprisingly consistent and predictable pattern of value realized by the organizations […]
It is a common mis-perception that agile methodologies view planning and documentation as dated, time-wasting practices that should be avoided. While it is true that the agile manifesto asks us to value response to change over adherence to (static) plans, and working code over comprehensive documentation, it does not ask us to push planning and […]
Better Software, 2009
This article describes Agile Feedback loops that help detect software and process issues that need to change, quickly identify and implement software changes that keep the cost of change to a minimum, and help projects stay on course and deliver value with each release. Tryst with Uncertainity 2009
